CAROLINA LIAR? Ash Bowie has little interest in the notions of legacy or Importance.

“And now, back to the music!” a voice exclaims over the WMBR airwaves. It’s the tail end of 1991, and the quip comes from a member of Polvo, who have just concluded a seven-song live session on MIT’s radio station (it can be heard on-line for minimal Googling) with a blistering, feedback-drenched tear through “Vibracobra” — the track that would kick off the band’s full-length debut album, Cor-Crane Secret, which Merge Records would release the following year.

At the time, the North Carolina quartet’s noisy sound was music to a select group of ears — cacophonous guitars and flailing rhythms circling around melody and structure and the half-buried vocals of frontman Ash Bowie, and then all of it collapsing in on itself like a semi-controlled demolition. In those nascent years, Polvo seemed to draw inspiration from a number of sources: the chorus-pedaled fury of Hüsker Dü; the slithering complexity of Slint; the deft tension-and-release of such Dischord bands as Jawbox and Lungfish; and certainly the arty dissonance, weird tunings, and aural freakouts of Sonic Youth (Bowie’s laconic delivery was particularly Thurstonian too). Over the next seven years and about as many LPs and EPs, Polvo shaped and refined their enthralling assault into something singular, never quite abandoning the clamor or becoming all that accessible, but from time to time incorporating moderately straightforward riffage or ambient drones, or exploring more wide-open spaces instead of the usual all-consuming guitar density. (Witness the odd classic-rock chops of 1997’s Shapes.)

The band amicably called it quits in 1998, and the decade since has been kind — like Slint, Polvo have been elevated to iconic status, cited as progenitors of “math rock,” and hailed as influential for a new generation of post-rock/post-punk groups. One such outfit, the Texas instrumental band Explosions in the Sky, was charged with curating this year’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in England, and when they asked Polvo to get back together for the May event, not only did the quartet agree, they appear to have made the reunion more lasting. Singers/guitarists Bowie and Dave Brylawski, bassist Steve Popson, and drummer Brian Quast (formerly of the Cherry Valence, he replaces original Polvo drummer Eddie Watkins) have written new material slated for an album they hope to begin recording in September, and they plan to spend much of this year touring the US.

“I feel like taking such a long break from the band is helping us in the present,” says Bowie. “The chemistry is still there, and maybe we’re a little more relaxed about what we’re doing. I think it’s easier to put our situation into perspective now and just enjoy what’s going on.”

Still, he admits that he felt so detached from the old songs, he was reluctant to dig into them again. So the band have reworked some of those compositions, sometimes dramatically. “There were some parts I actually disliked, and virtually no original lyrics I cared to sing anymore. Making changes to old material was a challenge, but it turned out to be a lot of fun also, and suddenly I was happy to be playing the songs again.”

Bit players What do you get when you cross NYU music-technology majors just out of their teens, vintage Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy gear, traditional rock-and-roll instruments, a mysterious, robot-building fellow named José with half a middle finger on one hand, and a shadowy underground network of info-spreading Swedes? No.

The electric company We all know how in 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, the previously all-acoustic Bob Dylan took the stage with an electric guitar, plugged in, enraged fans, and destroyed the folk-music scene forever.

Twin reverb For the better part of his prolific songwriting career, Texas singer/guitarist Will Johnson, when not releasing albums under his own name, has donned distinctive hats for his two bands.

Teenage kicks Gonzalez and Kibby humped their machines in unison as if the devices were all that stood between them and some serious Dionysian revelry.

Feign and fortune McNallica shredded upon nothingness like an unholy hybrid of Mick Mars and a feral burlesque dancer.

Japanamayhem Although Boris might seem just another Japanese drone-happy drop-tuned stoner-rock outfit, close inspection reveals instead a 16-year investigation of the meaning of sound and music itself.

Fast and dirty Experienced live, No Age’s songs feel like quick jabs of noise penned for the type of careless, rebellious summers that exist only in movies like Dazed and Confused .

BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL | October 27, 2009 Alison Sudol, the LA-based artist who records and performs as A Fine Frenzy, just loves it when I bring up the first show of her first-ever tour.

HE, HIMSELF, AND HI | October 19, 2009 “I was always the kid who hated to do group projects at school because I always thought I could work better on my own.”

FLY BY NIGHT? | September 08, 2009 For a decade, Eric Johnson's primary songwriting vehicle has been Fruit Bats, but the Portland-via-Chicago singer and multi-instrumentalist has always dipped in and out of other projects — Califone, Vetiver, Ugly Casanova among them.

SUITE RELIEF | June 10, 2009 For Longstreth, the pressure's been ratcheted up following the online leak a couple of months ago of Dirty Projectors' fifth LP, Bitte Orca (Domino) which is finally, officially out this week.

BIT PLAYERS | June 05, 2009 What do you get when you cross NYU music-technology majors just out of their teens, vintage Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy gear, traditional rock-and-roll instruments, a mysterious, robot-building fellow named José with half a middle finger on one hand, and a shadowy underground network of info-spreading Swedes? No.